Monthly Archives: January 2013

Amir Banifatemi is founder of K5 Accelerator, which is based at ChapmanCollege’s e-Village. He has extensive experience developing start up and growth companies in many different markets but focuses primarily on healthcare, internet and media technologies. While he is focused keenly on developing value, he also has an eye toward projects that have significant technological breakthroughs and significant social and economic impact.

Mehit: You’ve been quoted that the center of gravity in OrangeCounty has been around real estate and finance resulting in a very careful and staid culture. What would you like to see changed?

Amir: I would try to improve a certain number of things, one of those would be more collaboration. I think the history of OrangeCounty and how people are disbursed does not promote synergies. Unfortunately, distance makes it difficult for people to meet and collaborate on projects, except on big projects.

Further if you look historically, at San Francisco or other places, when people get out of college, where do they go? They go to Hewlett Packard or the Fairchild or Intel but what do they do here? They go to a real estate company or title company. The appropriate employment environment is lacking.

Finally, people are focused on cash today instead of cash tomorrow. Your attitude, your investment of time and resource in collaboration and how you view society and community are different if you looking at cash tomorrow.

The whole concept of branding is foreign to many small businesses. They view it as something that only matters in the ivory towers of global corporations.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Branding is all about making your business memorable, and it’s the small business rather than the big one that’s likely to get lost in the shuffle. Here are five core concepts that small business owners should know about branding.

1. Repetition and consistency are paramount. Any parent knows that when you say something once it seldom sinks in. And, parents who send mixed messages confuse the child … and perhaps themselves! The same dynamics apply to branding: the market needs to see the same imagery and the same message again and again and again.

In today’s world, going green is trendy. The environmental impact of transport is important as it creates air pollution and global warming through CO2 emissions. Many countries encourage riding a bicycle as it is pollution free and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If you want to take it to the green extreme, you can use a cycle made from 100-percent-recycled aluminum.

As a business owner, you know one of the keys to keeping employees productive is ensuring they aren’t wasting time. Time tracking and management software prevents wasted time, cuts down on projects slipping through the cracks and helps make sure deadlines are being met. Many of the software options include features that help track and coordinate projects, monitor employee hours and manage sick leave, vacation time, overtime and holidays. Time tracking software can also track other activities, such as presentations and meetings. In addition, some packages can produce invoices and integrate with accounting software.

Our sister site, TopTenREVIEWS, does extensive in-depth reviews of time tracking and management software. Here are the Top 3 recommendations for time tracking and management software:

Cinnamon: its lovely scent not only suffuses your home, but also lingers on to make you smell good!

Citrus fruit: split open a ripe orange, and you’re greeted with an instant burst of refreshing fragrance, and a light spray of juice. Eat the orange, and you’ll feel your mouth feel fresh, too. What’s more, citrus fruit is more readily absorbed by the body, so you give off a pleasant scent.

Cardamom: the sweet, spicy seeds of green cardamom are a favorite ingredient in mouth fresheners. I never buy commercial packets, preferring instead to simply split open a pod and pop the seeds in my mouth. For a long time after, the mouth feels fresh. Besides, cardamom is a powerful healing spice that boosts immunity.

Fenugreek seeds: they are a wonderful aid to smelling good. They are also excellent for strengthening bone health. Soak them overnight in clean water, and munch on them in the morning. At first, they taste slightly bitter, but as you chew, the flavor sweetens and feels wonderful in your mouth.

Entrepreneurs often talk about how they started their businesses with loans from family and friends, seed money from investors and even by maxing out their credit cards. But, for every one of these feel-good success stories, there are more than a few with unhappy endings.

Noelle Federico, the business manager and chief financial officer of Dreamstime.com, a stock photo service, said that while it is not easy to start and grow a business without incurring debt, it is possible.

“We’ve proven that it can be done,” she said. “Myself and the leadership team at Dreamstime.com have never taken loans, used credit cards or tapped angel investors to grow our business.”

Office workers are interrupted—or self-interrupt—roughly every three minutes, academic studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.